Job Fair, Dr. Appt, and went to Jail! All in one week!

Just an update of the week:

*Went to a Job Fair at the 1st high school I ever taught at on Tuesday night. I'm applying for the social studies position. One of the guys in the dept is retiring this year. Teaching in NH is sorta a mixed bag - it would provide stability for me which would be a welcomed change in my professional life. But the pay and retirement isn't that great. The guy that interviewed me is best friends with my current Principal. Oops! I wasn't planning on telling my current school that I was going to be looking for next year but due to all the drama that happened in Jan with the budget cuts, I decided that I would look for another job. My Principal received a phone call that evening from the guy at my 1st school that interviewed me. Joy! Where is the professionalism? Anyway, I guess the cat is out of the bag. The administration knows that I need to do what is best for ME. They said they don't want me to leave but they understand how unstable the school system is right now. And, my mortgage won't get paid on loyalty, I'll tell ya that much! :-(

*Had a Dr's appt on Wednesday. He finally decided to get the MRI done on the rotator cuff and make an appt with an orthopedic surgeon. It looks like surgery may be the way to go - ugh! The Dr's office called me today to say that my insurance company is being a pain about the MRI. They are questioning whether the MRI is "necessary" - nice! I'll update when I find out more info.

*Wednesday evening, I met my friend Aileen and we saw Juno here. Excellent movie! Check it out if you get a chance!

*Took my students to Middleton Jail today (Thursday) for a Scared Straight program. It was a huge eye-opening experience for me personally. It really got me to think about some of the choices I've made in life. It was a powerful program and I got the impression from most of my kids that the point hit home for them. The prison guards and prisoners stressed the role of family and teachers in their lives. And, that alcohol and drugs can really mess up your life and you could end up in prison. Middleton is a maximum security jail so it was pretty intense. I really hope the kids learned some important lessons as well.

Exciting plans for the weekend:
*Work at Paws on Saturday and Sunday.
*Correct student projects since grades close next Friday for 3rd quarter - where has the time flown by? One more quarter to go peeps! :-)

What are you doing this weekend??????

The History of Easter

Believe it or not, Easter and Paganism have a connection.

To learn a little history about Easter, check out the following links:

History Channel

Religious Tolerance

Enjoying a weekend off! :-)

It's a miracle! I actually have a FULL weekend off! Saturday and Sunday. No Paws. Nothing!

The big plan: Sleep in on both days! Something I rarely ever get to do anymore.

I also decided that I'm staying in for Easter. I'm not going out at all. There is always stuff to do around the condo but I'm just going to relax. I'm sooooo pumped you have NO idea! :-)

Happy Easter to those that celebrate it and here's to the Easter bunny! :-)

Happy St. Patrick's Day and other stuff! :-)

Wishing everyone a happy St. Patrick's Day and drink lots of green beer and Guinness! :-)

To my Irish friends - cheers! :-)

M-Dawg is enjoying a day off from school today. Just lounging around and watching DVD's - a true day off. Ellie the Cat is enjoying having me stay at home today. :-)

Worked all weekend at Paws. Sorta of a crappy weather weekend here in New England.

I'm getting ready to teach the Middle East unit in my Current World Affairs class. Should be interesting since I have a few students from Iraq and Lebanon. I'm trying to get this woman I met a few weekends ago from Afghanistan to come in and be a guest speaker to talk to the kids about living under the Taliban rule. She's a teacher too so I don't know how easy it would be to get her to school during the school day.

I'm still in the French Revolution unit in World History. The kids are currently storming the Bastille! :-)

That's about it for news here. Same old thing. School. No life. :-(

Have a good week peeps!

Doing a good thing for an animal! Or two! :-)

My friend Lea is fostering these two puppies! How adorable are they????? They've had a rough start to life but she's taking great care of them. They have some physical and neurological damage so they need constant care.

She may end up adopting them. Which I hope she does since they will go to a great home. Thanks Fishy for taking care of these little cutie pies!

Personal Day on Friday and plans for the weekend

A much need personal day was in the plan for me on Friday. I hadn't had a day off since the Wednesday of Feb break. For the most part, the day was rather relaxing. I slept in which is a HUGE deal for me. I had a doctor's appt in the early afternoon to check my rotator cuff. Since I've been doing physical therapy, my shoulder is doing much better. My Dr. wants to see me again in three weeks and to continue with the PT. The last appt for the day was PT. My PT has been using ultrasound and exercises to help the shoulder. This visit she tried this electric shock treatment with an ice pack on the shoulder. It felt weird but good. And, I have special exercises that I'm supposed to do at home to help the process. That's the update on the shoulder situation.

I also started the online application process for a job at my first high school that I taught and made an appointment for an interview at their job fair on March 25th on Friday. The application online took me hours to complete. The school is in NH and I'm sorta mixed on whether or not going back is a good idea. The commute is less which is good for my car and gasoline prices. It's good in the sense that NH provides stability - they don't do the budget cut thing or lay people off. I really need financial stability since I have a mortgage to pay. The negative is the pay and the retirement system. NH pay is less and the retirement is crap. Another plus is the health insurance (district pays 90% and employee pays 10%). This school system would acknowledge all my time in education so I could start at a step 10 (10 years teaching and they would recognize my 30 credits above the Masters which MA schools are not doing right now). To compensate the lose of income I could get involved in other activities to raise my salary to where it would be now. Although there are no guarantees of a job, the Principal and Assistant Principals told me they really want me back. I left there on a positive note back in 2003. This school had a lot of issues but I'm beginning to realize what school doesn't have issues. There is no such thing as a perfect environment and I just need to suck it up and deal. Lots of decisions! I'll update later.

I need to point out too that I will only looking for jobs in the area that I'm living in right now. I don't want the hellish commute that I currently have now so if a school is looking for someone in my area, I will apply. Otherwise, I'm staying at my current school. The financial stability at my current school is not good right now anyway so who knows if they will be letting me go?

An update on the condo parking space situation: I might have to go see a lawyer. What the association did might be against the law so I need to have a lawyer read/translate my documents. I have a deeded parking space which means there are marked documents at the courthouse that states that I own that parking space. My head teacher of my dept at school was a former lawyer so he said he would look at the papers for me. He said that if he can't help me, he could refer me to a good lawyer that could help me. And, another teacher at my school is on the board of her condo association and she said she might be able to help too. So that's the update so far on my parking space.

The plans for the weekend include:

*Today (Saturday), I have High Tea at the Concord Colonial Inn with Delta Kappa Gamma. My chapter and the chapter in Concord are having High Tea. Sounds very high class, doesn't it??? :-)

*We are supposed to get a ton of rain today - flooding type stuff. Let's cross our fingers that I don't have to build an ark!

*Working at Paws on Sunday. Hope to see lots of dogs! :-)

*School work. That never goes away! :-(

Any excitement in your lives?????

Happy Birthday Lea!

This picture was taken last summer of Lea and I. I had a quick visit to IL to see family and friends after my Russia trip.

We were hanging out at Joann's house on her comfy desk. A silly picture of two old friends.

Lea - aka Fish. What can I say? I have to keep this post PG-13 regarding all the good times we had in the Illinois Valley. :-) I owe my best parties and memories to you kiddo - thanks for all the good times.

Most of all, thanks for the friendship. You always make me smile. :-)

Lots of hugs!

PS I mailed your card and a small gift today. Oops! :-)

You really didn't need that second parking space, did ya M-Dawg?

When I bought my condo almost three years ago, it came with two parking spaces. I hemmed and hawed about whether or not I should sell the second space but I decided to keep the second space for the value that it might add when I go to sell the condo later on.

I currently rent out the second parking space to a couple on the other side of the building because their unit only came with one parking spot and they have two cars.

Tonight, I come home to find a garbage dumpster IN THE MIDDLE OF MY PARKING SPACE!!! And, five poles have been installed into the pavement to put up fencing around the dumpster. Nice!

So my concern in the beginning of this drama was the couple and where would they park their car? I called them and left a message explaining to them I don't know what is going on and when I find something out, I'll let them know. And then my concern was that this is MY PROPERTY and I PAY TAXES on it. The fact that my condo association never notified me started to piss me off.

Since we are run by an association, we don't have any contact info except an emergency pager number and email address. So, I contacted both to ask what was the deal? I have yet to get a response from either.

Meanwhile, the couple that rents my parking spot called me to tell them THEY were called today at work to let them know that the parking spot had been relocated and they still have a parking space. Nice. No phone call to me. I still have no idea where they moved the space. From what the couple told it's a temporary space until they (the association) can figure where to move the space permanently.

And the best part of the story: If there was any mentioning of this type of thing in the condo documents - I would have no clue. Why? Because I don't have the condo docs. I've been emailing the association since I moved in here almost three years ago and they keep promising they would get me a copy. I'm still waiting. The documents would have any restrictions, rules, fines, property info, etc. on not only my condo but whole building and grounds.

I'm so mad right now. Apparently, I'm asking too much from my association. Good thing I pay condo dues, heh?

Why is it that the first week back from a break is the longest week ever????

The week was rough. Long. Insane. Exhausting.

Monday was a long day . . . we had an incident occur over the Feb break with five of our students. Four of our senior boys gang raped a junior girl at a party and another one of our senior boys watched it. The kids were all wound up and chatty about it. In my Current World Affairs class, one of the kids brought it up as a "Current Event" and I told them that the police reports were off limits for discussion for Current Events. All they wanted to do was gossip about what happened and I refused to discuss it with them. This isn't the only time they've done this in class. A few weeks ago, one of our bus drivers was arrested for domestic abuse - he beat the hell out of his son with a baseball bat. I have his son in one of my classes. The Current World Affairs class tried to "discuss it" and I shut they down and said NO! It's not appropriate. They just don't get it . . . . .

We had a dept meeting on Wednesday and it got a little nasty. We were discussing common assessments (midterm and final exams) and members of my dept are totally against it. I understand their perspective but this is the world of No Child Left Behind . . . . we have NO choice! We are being told by our Superintendent and Principal to accomplish this task. Just do it. Get over it. End of story. Most schools in this country have been doing common assessments for years. Every school I've ever worked at has common assessment for midterm and finals. People began turning against each other in this meeting. I just sat there and shook my head. Afterwards, my colleagues on the freshman team and I went downstairs and commented on how relieved we are that the four of us like working together and are open minded and willing to do what needs to get done for this common assessment stuff.

I had a melt down on my housemaster aka Asst. Principal on Friday about my SPED co-teacher. I have officially hit the wall with him. I got pulled out of class for a meeting on Thursday so they had a sub for me plus he's supposed to be in the room. When I returned at the end of the day, the sub wrote down all these horrible stuff about my kids and how some kids left the room and didn't come back, some were disruptive, etc. I was curious about where was my lovely SPED teacher so the next day, I confronted him and he told me two different stories. One story was he said he had a meeting. The other story was the sub told him that she didn't need him and he could leave - which story is it? And, since when does a sub tell a teacher what they should do? I need to point out that he's also under the assumption that when the regular ed teacher is out of the class, he doesn't have to be in the classroom - a few of the SPED teachers think this way but from what I'm told, it's NOT the RULE. The other huge issue I have is that every one of my students on an IEP in the co-taught class is failing my class. I do the best I can with the accommodations but this man does nothing. It's HIS JOB to follow all the IEP's too. He doesn't even know the kids or even their names! Sitting in the back of my classroom and falling asleep is the name of game for this teacher. My housemaster told me he's going to interview the other three history teachers in the freshman house to see if the SPED teacher does the same thing in their classes. Off the record, they tell me he sleeps and does nothing in their classes too. I'll be curious to see if they tell the truth about this guy. I understand that they don't want the guy to lose his job but this is about the kids not getting their legal rights. By law, these accommodations need to be met. Unfortunately, most of our parents don't understand the IEP (due to language issues) so these kids have no advocate for their education. So I guess the advocate would be me. I'll update soon.

And, I'm working all weekend at the doggie store. I really need a vacation!

So, that's the scoop on the past week. Makes ya want to run out and become a teacher, doesn't it???